Breathing.
My knees hit the floor.
Silence.
Outside the door, Alpha speaks again.
"That's right, brother."
The words reach me through wood.
Not praise.
Recognition.
He knows what the chair was.
He knows what it wasn't.
"You hold it."
I close my eyes.
The wanting is still here.
The chair is gone.
The wanting is quieter.
For today, that is enough.
I pace.
Three steps.
Turn.
Three steps.
Chapter eleven
Jen
The coffee is cold.
I know because I've taken three drinks anyway.
The kitchen is quiet except for the wood stove ticking as it cools and the wind moving through the pines outside. Every few seconds I find myself looking toward the hallway.
Nothing. No wall thumping. No growling. No Fen. The silence should be a relief. Instead it has every muscle in my body wound tight.
Crull is planted beside the hallway door like a boulder somebody built a cabin around. Thaw is at the kitchen window. Harek leans against the front wall with his arms crossed. Daron is sitting at the table.
Nobody is talking much. Nobody is pretending they aren't listening for the next sound.
I wrap both hands around my mug and stare into coffee that stopped being hot a while ago. Then Dean comes through the front door carrying a stack of folders under one arm.
"We should probably talk about what we found."
